D&D General Are You There D&D? It's Me, J.R.R. Tol-KEEEEN!

[TiQuinn]

The funniest part of this tangent is that Gary Gygax swore up and down that Tolkien was not a major influence on D&D compared to Howard, Vance, Anderson and others.

 

[Fifth Element]

I would say real life is a bigger influence. I went to a British boarding school, and it really was just like Hogwarts (without the magic and the girls). We had four boarding houses, each of which was named after a supposedly famous man, and had a reputation for a certain type of student. Romney was very sporty, Crabbe was academic m, Talis was dossers and Scott - had me, which probably made it Hufflepuff.

Reminds me of a YouTuber (Caelan Conrad) critiquing the Potter books including the line "she's not creative, you're just American."

 

[payn]

The funniest part of this tangent is that Gary Gygax swore up and down that Tolkien was not a major influence on D&D compared to Howard, Vance, Anderson and others.

Everybody listens to Gary; until they dont.

 

[MGibster]

some read it sure, but it was mostly people younger than Gen X from my understanding. I am pretty squarely in Gen X rather than the tail end, and no one cared about it. 10 years or so younger, there were some. I consider it YA, and given that the youngest Gen Xers were 17 when the first novel was released, they were just exiting that category.

I think it wasn't until Prisoner of Azkaban in 1999 that I figured out Harry Potter wasn't the author. I know a few fellow Gen Xers who got into Potter, but most of them were into fantasy in general, so I'm not sure its a good representation of demographics. I tend to think Potter was more popular among our children than it was my generation.

 

[MGibster]

Reminds me of a YouTuber (Caelan Conrad) critiquing the Potter books including the line "she's not creative, you're just American."

I think Rowling unseated Prachett as Britain's best selling author. They seemed to go crazy for her in Britain as well.

Everybody listens to Gary; until they dont.

Gygax is an unreliable narrator.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Everybody listens to Gary; until they dont.

I believe it is the 2e PH “example of play” that has one of the characters say to a monster, “It’s OK - Gary sent us.”

But then they end up in a fight anyway.

(Hmm. I should probably Google this before posting. But where’s the fun in that?)

 

[Azzy]

Well, obviously a lot of Gen Xers were into it.

I did. My nephew was reading it at the time and loved, so I read them to show support of his interests. They were fun.

 

[Hussar]

no, that was after Gen X, the youngest Gen Xers were 17 when the first book was released

You really think 20-somethings weren’t reading Harry Potter?

Little hint. You don’t become the all time number one selling author if you only appeal to one demographic.

 

[Smackpixi]

The only traceable influence on modern DnD is previous DnD really. The rest is just, well, all the fantasy out there. I know it’s fun to draw all these lines and stuff, get up your conspiracy wall and yarn and make the connections, but maybe back in the 70s or early 80s you could, when the totality of it was still knowable, but now, the amount of stuff out there permeating the culture makes it meaningless. Things that seem influenced by some old original source, aren’t, they’re based on something 4 layers deep of influence the creator reimagined original that resembles something you know that she’s never heard of. Types of magic have been originally created many times since the first time.

 

[dbolack]

Modern D&D is more related with anime than it is LotRs

I would say that it's more that it is now derivative of things that are largely derivative of earlier incarnations of it ( more than it is of it's own lineage )